No surface all feeling
by Toni Harrison
Summary: Is Danny coping? Danny narrative in the main with a bit of Jack. Spoilers for 3.23 and season 4 so far. Rated for bit of swearing. Please read and review. Thankyou.


Title: No Surface All Feeling

A bit of sweariness but that's all. This is from Danny's POV.

Authors note: If you're in the UK, this'll have spoilers. If you're up to date in the US, then not. Another brimming over with happiness fic from me. I've not been around for a while due to real life being pretty depressing one way or another. Glad to be back and can't wait to read all the fics on here again.

The above title taken from the Manic Street Preachers single of the same name. The words at the beginning of this fic are taken from a song also by The Manics called 'The Everlasting'.

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

Disclaimer: This show and the characters in the show don't belong to me. The fic idea is mine though.

* * *

_In the beginning when we were winning when our smiles were genuine but now unforgiven the everlasting everlasting. _

The world is full of refugees, they're just like you and just like me, but as people we have a choice to end the void with all it's force so don't forget or don't pretend it's all the same now in the end, it was said in a different life, destroys my days and haunts my nights.

I think I lost the ability to feel. I lost the ability to care. And I don't care what anyone says, it felt safer that way.

Let's face it when I do make the effort to care, I get no thanks for it. I just get deeper and deeper into a mire. One that's self imposed? Hey, I don't know.

I'm not the one making the rules here, I don't know who is. Some other being, earthly or not. Sometimes I really do wonder.

All I know is, surely no one can be surprised, that eventually you won't have the strength to carry on and that sometimes it _is _too much of an effort to get up one morning, any mornings for that matter.

It doesn't help much when you see people who have been through so much more than you cope seemingly so well, it makes you almost want to yell at them, hurt them, hell do something to make them seem as human, no that's wrong, make them seem as weak as you are.

Then you find yourself that one day when you have managed to force yourself out of bed and bypass the mirror, the shaver and the fridge where you just know anyway there'll only be a smell a thousand times worse than the dirtiest feet you've ever come across and the flashing light on your telephone, standing shrunken and feeling so very small by the bar you've worked so hard to walk past every night for the last god knows how many years.

And you feel the little demons inside of you, the good ones and the bad fighting their battles, you can almost hear their voices, and let's face it that's another story altogether and then you just know that on this occasion Goliath will trample all over David because life's felt like that anyway for the last couple of months.

You hear yourself utter those words, just three of them. 'Double whisky please'. And you feel like crying and yet those bad little demons are starting a drum roll and from somewhere there's this sense of anticipation and you know that that growl in the pit of your stomach isn't just a feeling of dread.

Suddenly this feeling emerges when you feel like you're watching yourself from above and as you do so and as you see yourself pick the tumbler up and move it ever closer to your lips, from somewhere comes this realisation and you're so close to drinking it, you can smell the whisky, you can feel your tongue doing some grotesque kind of movement as if it wants to slurp the whole thing down in one 2 second record, this realisation tells you that sure it might help you for one second, this wonderful rich warm feeling that seeps into your body but what effect will it have on the rest of your life.

And you know that 'the rest of your life' will be as good as dead, it'll be as good as over, it'll be as over as Ryan's seems to be. It'll be as over as Mom and Dad's are. And you know somewhere in your being, that's not a good thing.

But still you hurt too much, so as you feel yourself shaking all over your body and as all sound around seems to fade in and out and you somehow stumble from the stool in the bar and towards the fresh air, you notice some wetness on your face and you feel salt on your tongue and it feels good. And that's the first positive thing you've thought in weeks.

Somehow you make it to the office, if anyone ever asks how you made it there, you'll wrack your brains to try and remember 'yeah how the hell did I get there' and you imagine it was either by virtue of a cab or by that old method of putting one foot in front of the other.

As you sit in work and stare at the screen where if you really tried but thankfully you don't have the energy you could see your own reflection, you feel yourself fall tired and so you give up fighting and end up on the floor trying to make yourself comfortable and rest your head on your jacket and hug yourself to keep warm.

And then they come. Those images. Those cries. Red everywhere. Then black. Then people laughing at you, blaming you, hitting you and then that old sensation you always get when people are chasing you and you end up at an open window 30 storeys up and then just as you're about to jump, you're pulled back and attacked by them, everyone single one of them and you just want to scream at them to leave you alone and let you get away from the pain.

'Danny'

'Taylor!'.

And you feel something on your shoulder and you shrug it off, annoyed at being disturbed again before you realise that it's a hand pushing on your shoulder and that voice is real.

It's very real and it's larger than life and it's called Jack Malone. Oh shit.

Initially you're full of bravado, full of crap and resolved seemingly to ignore every bit of good intention Jack has toward you.

And then he drags you up to his level and forces you to look into your eyes, and of course you're playing the great big idiot and looking anywhere else than at him, before he grabs your cheeks and you realise, not for the first time, that you'd hate to be on the really wrong side of Jack Malone and you stare at him and notice that the only thing that's behind his eyes is kindness and in a way that feels worse, it feels terrifying. Who needs sympathy?

So you pull yourself away and move faster than the speed of any number of drug assisted athletes and into the mens room, not the best idea, Jack has legs too and can follow you there, but hell you're way past the point of logical thinking now and as you step inside and catch sight of some tired, gaunt and frankly not very attractive guy in the mirror and he's staring back at you, and god even when you look away briefly, when you look back at the mirror he's there again.

You feel yourself crumple from the inside and you hear the door open and suddenly you need. You need so much.

And he's there.

Next thing you know, you're in his office and it all comes tumbling out. You're scared, or maybe you're not anymore and yet it's wrapped itself like a blanket around you and it's the only emotion you've known for a while so you just don't know any other way to feel.

You say you're scared to talk to Fitz, you know it hurts him, that's a good thing surely that you know it is affecting the other person and yet you've been powerless to stop it. You say that being in a car with Fitz caused him to nearly die. And you can't be with him, you're too angry with yourself and you're angry with him for trusting you and nearly paying with his life. Poor bastard as if he hasn't had enough to cope with.

When Jack points out quite reasonably that it's the shooters that caused Fitz to nearly die, you throw something approximating to a temper tantrum most two years old would be proud of and you say that it's bad luck to be around you. The proof is there, the punishment for killing your Mom and Dad by distracting Dad's attention for that one moment has been incalculable and so it seems never ending. Look what happened to Viv, to Sam, to Fitz, to Raffie. You're bad news. And the sooner you're out of everyone's hair the better. You say how much you wished you'd had that drink and disappeared from sight for always. It'd be better for everyone else.

You notice him flinch, only for a moment but it's there and it's so visible and it registers somewhere that it's good to know he cares so much that that shocked him. Next thing, Jack moves from behind his desk and kneels in front of you, lifts your chin and says 'I don't care what's going on in that head of yours at the moment Taylor, I don't even care if somewhere along the line there's some kind of logic or truth behind what you're saying, we're family. All of us.'

And for about five minutes, he launches into some kind of speech those tv movies'd be proud of. He'll always be there for me. Everyone cares. They all understand. If I ever feel even slightly like drinking again, phone him. Day/Night. It doesn't matter.

And despite myself, I begin to believe him. Despite myself I hear myself agreeing to talk to someone, a counsellor? Martin? I don't really know.

He asks me 'How are you feeling?'. And I answer truthfully. 'Like shit'.

I don't know why he smiles but he does. And from somewhere I can feel my face begin to crack and intermingled with the tears that have been flowing for about the last half hour, I feel my lips turn up at the sides, I feel the salty taste in my mouth and I smile possibly the weakest but in some ways the best smile I've done in a long time.


End file.
